What a difference a year makes. In the spring of 2009, Governor Rick Perry famously suggested that Texas could secede from the United States, and he rejected federal money meant to recharge the state’s unemployment fund. Fast forward to this summer, and the state’s capital city Austin is busy installing high efficiency fluorescent light bulbs at its Palmer Event Center as part of a $7.5 million municipal energy efficiency project funded by the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The federally funded Palmer project alone is expected to save Austin taxpayers $21,501 annually in energy costs. That’s just one of seven municipal facilities that will be retrofitted with new energy efficient light bulbs funded by the federal Recovery Act within the next few weeks, with as many as 16 other buildings slated for other efficiency upgrades.